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Politico Article: Please let this be a clever plant by our side.

There is an article at Politico this evening that purports to preview Mitt Romney’s “hard-line strategy” for the first debate.

According to Politico the secret plan is being telegraphed by Romney himself and other important Republicans.

The plan is for Romney to “fact check” Obama even though Karl Rove doesn’t like that terminology.

I think that approach would be disastrous for Romney.

Although he is often thin-skinned, Barack Obama is quite adept at mouthing platitudes that sound sort of half way reasonable in response to specific criticism.

Romney should focus on the big picture. He should not get bogged down in “President Obama said blah blah and it was a big lie”.

Americans know that all politicians stretch the truth, make promises they can’t keep and often flat out lie. Any effort by Romney to try to pin a few “You fibbed” stickers on Obama will just end up making them both look small and petty.

Romney should matter of factly state a few basic truths.

1. Obama promised change but we got more of the same.

1A. Obama promised a new tone but our government is as off key as ever.

2. Obama has done nothing since he got Obamacare passed (this will force Obama to either start blaming Congress, or he’ll start reciting a laundry list of stuff that he accomplished none of which will impress anyone outside his base).

3. Obama promised the world would love us when he was elected. Instead they are still killing Americans including an Ambassador. (And I read somewhere that’s the first Ambassador killed since Jimmy Carter?)

3A. Obama promised to win Afghanistan and in four years we have gone backwards.

4. Why dose Obama want four more years? What did he spend the first four doing? He passed Obamacare which a majority of the country didn’t want. He passed the stimulus which didn’t work. Gitmo is still open. Afghanistan is a quagmire. America is reviled throughout the Middle-East. Unemployment is still over 8%. What is in store for a second term?

I mean this stuff is not that difficult to map out. Running as a challenger against an incumbent presents many high value targets.

Romney needs to stay away from a recitation of stupid things Obama has said and indict the entirety of Obama’s presidency as a massive failure both home and abroad.